The Blog

February 20, 2014

What else can you buy for $16 billion?

A billion dollars isn’t what it used to be but it’s still substantial. You might wonder, as I did, what else in the world might be worth $16 billion the sum Facebook will pay (unless it pays $19 billion) for WhatsApp. As it turns out there are lots of things and people in the $16 billion range. Here are some examples.

Len Blavatnik, a self-made man with diversified holdings is #44 in Forbes list of richest people in the world.

Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computer, is #25 in Forbes’ American list.

According to the UN, GDP rankings the Republic of Georgia has a GDP of $15,830 billion.

The 2014 winter Olympics cost Russia a reported $50 billion. But the 2018 event in Pyeonchang, South Korea has an infrastructure budget of only $7 billion, assuming a 100% overrun we’re in the neighborhood.

The latest US Aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is the first in a new class of carriers also called the Ford class, aka the floating Fort Knox. It was christened last year and had a cost of $13 billion, not including things like planes and ammo. Ford-class carriers will begin replacing the 40 year-old Nimitz-class carriers and we can expect a $16 billion carrier any time now.

F-35 joint strike fighter jet. Projected cost of $391.2 billion for a fleet of 2,443. That’s a current projection of $160.13 million per. Seems light to me.

US federal budget, $2.9 trillion with a deficit of $901 billion, now that’s big.

Forget all that, I decided to do what’s fastest and easiest. I simply Googled $16 billion to see what would pop up. Naturally, WhatsApp and Facebook were everywhere, but if you get deep into the search pile interesting things begin to emerge. Here are headlines and links.

More Than $16 Billion in Taxpayer Money Wasted Annually on Animal Testing

The use of psychotropic drugs by adult Americans increased 22 percent from 2001 to 2010, with one in five adults now taking at least one psychotropic medication, according to industry data. In 2010, Americans spent more than $16 billion on antipsychotics, $11 billion on antidepressants and $7 billion for drugs to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).